Archive for the ‘Government/Politics’ Category

Towson, Maryland is an urban-adjacent town just north of Baltimore City, with a mix of young families, retirees, and young professionals and a growing population of college students. As of 2014, Towson University’s undergraduate population totaled over 18,000 students, with on-campus housing available for fewer than 5,000 students. This means that up to 13,000 students are […]

When architects or engineers set out to design a building, a critical element that they should think about, along with what the building will be used for, is access. This doesn’t mean access for only fit, healthy, and able-bodied people. This also means access for the elderly, people in wheelchairs, or potentially those with baby buggies […]

In 2025, one French national out of three will be older than sixty-five. In order to face this change in society, on April 24, 2013, the industrial sector of the silver economy was born. Its objective? To mobilize and organize a group of actors who can respond to the needs of seniors and their helpers. […]

On August 25th, 2014 we celebrated 100 years of the formal existence of street markets in São Paulo, a true cultural heritage of the city. The date refers to the first regulation of this activity in the capital, Act 710, signed by Mayor Washington Luis in 1914. The first official market in the city took place […]

Men and women step over the homeless, with shoes worth more than that individual earns in a year, begging on the streets of San Francisco. Most treat San Francisco’s homeless population similar to a chronic condition. It is seen as an issue which is constantly looming over the city, but will never be resolved. Some are […]

Priority to pedestrians, but also more parking – this is the paradox that emerges from the first phase of consultations conducted by the City regarding the restructuring of Rue Sainte-Catherine West, which the President of the Executive Committee, Pierre Desrochers, summed up recently. The city’s designers formulated four restructuring alternatives in the stride of this […]

Considered to be the main cultural and historical heritage building in the Reconcavo of Bahia, the São Félix, a former railway station, is now in an advanced state of deterioration and has been abandoned by the government since June 2014. An organization known as the Coletivo Criativo Ocupa Estação (Creative Collective for the Occupation of the Station) […]

Climate change poses a threat to peace, security, health, livelihoods, places and species. The United Nations project Future Earth has been designed to respond to these challenges. Its purpose is to advance scientific studies on questions of environmental impact, to merge science and public policy, and to develop the knowledge for responding effectively to the […]

In Paris, Lyon and Marseille, the development of mass transit is a central element of the metropolitan project. However, the stakes and steps taken are very different from one city to the other. Aurelien Delpirou compares the three contexts and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each of their strategies. The creation of the Paris, […]

The Municipality of Florianópolis and EMBARQ Brazil signed an agreement of technical, financial, economic, social and environmental cooperation on the afternoon of Thursday, September 25th. The act was formalized between Mayor Cesar Souza Junior and the Director of Strategic Development & Relations for EMBARQ Brazil, Rejane Fernandes, with the consent of the ambassador of Great […]

The government projects “Green Pastille” (“pastille verte”), “Carless Day” (“journée sans voiture”), and “Even/Odd Day” (“journée paire/impaire”) raise the central question of the place of the car in our cities. Is the end of the reign of the car here yet? The mission of eco-neighborhoods is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the city. What […]

The São Francisco basin covers five states in Brazil and experts say the biodiversity of the region is under threat. The director of the Serra da Canastra National Park, Arthur Luiz Castanheira, said in an interview with G1 (Globo 1) that the source of the São Francisco River, located in São Roque de Minas, is […]

The Movement of Landless Workers (MTST) has been protesting since the afternoon of Thursday [September 25th] outside the headquarters of the Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo (SABESP) in Pinheiros, west of the capital. Like the protest that ended in violence in Itu (SP) earlier in the week, the movement reports water […]

Natura 2000 sites were established to protect the 220 habitats and approximately 1,000 species throughout Europe. The Natura 2000 sites came into being with the European Union’s habitats directive, Directive on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora. There are over seventy Natura 2000 sites in Galway (the most in Ireland); however most of […]

Relying on detailed census data to study the transformations of the Parisian metropolis, Anne Clerval and Matthieu Delage show that a dynamic of becoming more bourgeois should not mask the strength of the social division in the space of the Ile-de-France, especially at the intracommunal scale. The discourses that refer to the suburb and the […]

The construction company, Andrade Gutierrez SA was responsible for the construction of the stadium known as the Arena da Amazônia (a football stadium previously known as the Vivaldão which was reconstructed from 2011- 2014 as part of Brazil hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup). Recently, the company has been ordered to pay an indemnity for collective moral […]

More than just a pastime, the bicycle also serves as a mode of transportation. At the initiative of the Office of Transportation for the Ile-de-France (Stif), the Veligo measure proposes secure parking spaces for your bicycle near train or metro stations. Users of public transportation who would be prepared to get to the train station […]

More parking spaces for bikes, new bike paths on the main roadways, widespread 30km/h zones, and possibly wider bicycle paths or even banning automobile traffic surrounding markets; these are some of the measures included in the Parisian local government’s new “bike plan.” The plan, which should be finalized at the beginning of December after a period […]

Exasperated by the presence of cyclists in the streets’ protected lanes, the bus drivers of Montreal denounce the “inaction” of police officers in a petition. They demand the creation of a law that expressly forbids bikers to ride in lanes reserved for buses during peak hours. Driver Jency Mercier, who works for the Transportation Society […]

As bike sharing programs continue to proliferate in cities and college campuses across the US, Iowa State University is in the midst of creating its own bike share program to be integrated with the City of Ames. The university is utilizing student work to design the bike network, and has allocated a small amount of […]